Making History

This morning we left for Illinois, to join my sister and should-be sister-in-law in making history.  You see, today marks the beginning of civil unions in Illinois, and my sister and her better half are among the first to be joined in civil unity.

There's a big ceremony tomorrow morning in a Chicago park, in which couples from across the state will participate.  The governor and the mayor will both speak.  I am really excited to be a part of the festivities and I am also looking forward to the time we will spend together after the ceremony!

Personal Shout-Out to Judge Walker

Judge Walker, I just wanted to thank you for advancing this country one step closer to the day when half my first family can experience true equality.  I read the entire findings and conclusions document for Perry et al. vs Schwarzenegger et al. and it brought tears to my eyes.  Marriage has indeed changed over the course of history, and it is becoming more egalitarian as it should be.  You are a fair-minded man for being open to this evolution of society.

If I actually knew you, I would bake you the most beautiful and delicious cake that I could, in thanks for your help in making this country better and stronger through the fair-minded application of justice.  Instead, just know that I appreciate you setting us on the path toward equality for all Americans!

Progress (Yeah!!!)

I was overjoyed to learn today of the Iowa Supreme Court's unanimous ruling striking down the state's ban on same-sex marriages!

The justices cited equal protection in their decision, and also noted that objections to same-sex marriage are purely religious in nature:

In one part of the decision that focuses on religious opposition to same-sex marriage, the justices seemed to anticipate negative reactions, saying they considered the unspoken reason for the ban on same-sex marriages to be religiously motivated. The justices said marriage was a “civil contract” and should not affect religious doctrine or views.

Thank you, Iowa Supreme Court, for saying exactly what I've said for years: marriage as regulated by the government is a secular institution. If two heterosexual atheists are allowed to get married, then the civil marriage contract cannot be a religious contract. Therefore, religious arguments against any type of marriage -- mixed-race, same-sex, ugly people, you name it -- are irrelevant to the practice of marriage contracts as regulated by the government.

If your church doesn't want to marry two people of the same sex, that's fine -- don't do it. Nobody can force you to, just like they can't force you to sanctify the marriage of atheists in the church, or people of two different races, or whatever other couples who break your religious tenets. But your religion does not get to inform the government of the fitness of couples to be joined in civil marriage. No way.

Thank you, Iowa Supreme Court, for getting it. You are made of awesome!

In Which I Feel that I'm Vicariously Living through Junior High Yet Again

I was filled with such hope this past Tuesday evening, when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. I kissed the wiggling boy in my arms as I felt a lump forming in my throat. My precious son will think nothing of electing a president of any race or ethnicity. Tonight, we have made this world a better place for him to inherit.

But by morning, my hope turned to despair. The same state that delivered the presidency to a man who would have been forced to take the back seat of a bus forty years ago had told its gay and lesbian citizens that their temporary welcome at the front of the equality bus was overstayed, and it was back to second-class status for them.

I wept when I saw confirmation of my worst fears: California's Proposition 8 passed. I spent my prescheduled counseling session crying and discussing the damage California's voters had done to my psyche, rather than talking about the personal issues I had hoped to work through. The sadness and depression has been lingering over my head all week long.

I have never given money to any political cause, but I gave money to the "No on 8" campaign. As my longtime readers know, two members of my first family are gay, so while this was a personal fight to me, it seemed to mean a lot more to me than that, for some reason. My goodness, I am more upset than the person nearest and dearest to me who is impacted the most by this defeat! She was taking it in stride, while I am still a mess.

After some Friday night introspection, I was able to figure out why this defeat upset me so: It's like living through Junior High School all over again! Hear me out.

Proposition 8 was a measure to decide what kind of rights a minority group of people should be allowed to have. Are their actions sufficiently acceptable to the general public? Basically, it boiled down to a popularity contest -- were gays and lesbians popular enough to be allowed to remain on equal footing with their heterosexual counterparts?

Do you see how flawed that method of decision-making is? It's reminiscent of Junior High School, in which your fate is determined by consensus of the most popular students -- they decide who gets tripped on the way to the cafeteria or who gets their face plunged into the toilet bowl; whose life is hell on earth and who can just live their lives in peace. It's juvenile and it's not in the spirit of the entitlement of all people to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I'm sorry, but nobody's rights are up for debate. Even the most vile and bigoted people are deserving of equal protection under the law. That's the whole point of having a Bill of Rights, and of having separation of church and state -- to allow people to follow their own path even when their views or private behaviors are incredibly unpopular.

For example, I think (as do most people who would read this blog on a regular basis) that white supremacists are some of the most vile and bigoted people in the world. Should we vote on their right to vote, marry, or live their private lives in peace? Absolutely not! Their popularity (or lack thereof) should not be a consideration when it comes to how they are treated under the law.

I see that some gay rights groups have filed lawsuits against Proposition 8, arguing that by allowing Proposition 8 to stand, "you are effectively rendering equal protection a nullity if a simple majority can so easily carve an exception into it. Equal protection is supposed to prevent the targeting and subjugation of a minority group by a simple majority vote." By contributing to their legal fund, I hope to find some cathartic release, almost as if I were helping my fellow nerds fight back against the assholes who dunked their proverbial heads in the toilet. A win for equality will go a long way towards healing many emotional wounds, including those I sustained at school some two decades ago.

Dear Voters of California

Today is Write to Marry Day, in which bloggers write about their opposition to Proposition 8, the proposed amendment to the California constitution that would take away the rights of same-sex couples to marry.  This is a post I've been working on for a long time in my head, and thanks to the impetus of the day, is finally coming out on the page!

Dear Voters of California,

This coming Tuesday, you will be voting on an issue that is near and dear to my heart.  I really wish that I could be one of you so that I could vote against Proposition 8.

Why?  Because if there's one thing in this world that's important to me, it's my family.  I love my husband, I love my son, and my sisters and my parents too.  I love my in-laws, my bonus family members, and my outlaws too.

Outlaws?  Yes, I have outlaws.  They're people who, in my mind, are in-laws, except for the whole lack of legality business.  You see, half my first family is gay.  This means that the loving, loyal, supportive lifetime partners of my family members are considered complete strangers to my family members under the law, because between the two partners there is not exactly one Y chromosome.

But in California, my same-sex-coupled family member/outlaw pair could be considered as legitimate as my husband and I, and share the same sorts of rights and responsibilities that he and I do.  They could be considered first-class citizens with the same rights toward each other that any single-Y-chromosome pair of adults who love each other can have by paying a modest fee to the County Clerk's office.

That is, provided that you vote down Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 is designed to take away rights -- rights that anyone should have -- to marry, regardless of the content of their chromosomes.  And that, Californians, is just plain wrong.

The opponents of marriage equality, knowing that there is no legitimate legal argument for their opposition, have resorted to lying -- saying that legalizing same-sex marriage would force churches to marry same-sex couples or lose their tax exempt status.  That is untrue.  Churches could choose to not marry same-sex couples, just like they can choose not to marry couples who don't follow any of their other religious tenets.  If a church doesn't have to sanctify the marriage of an atheist, they won't have to sanctify the marriage of a same-sex couple, either.

No, this is not about upending other people's religions.  This is about respecting the civil rights of people who are different from you.  This is about leading the way in tolerance, love, and justice.

I hope that you in California vote down Proposition 8, and that it energizes the country so that sometime soon, I will be able to weep with joy as I watch my family members and their same-sex partners united in matrimony, not only spiritually but legally.

Sincerely,

Rebecca, loyal sister, daughter, and friend to LGBT people

Understanding Before Being Understood

One of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is to "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood." The idea is that before we can fix a problem, we have to understand what's going on. This involves empathetic listening, which is a skill that the majority of us have not cultivated very well.

I know that I have long been in the habit of listening with the intention of replying rather than understanding. My empathy is too often limited to relating someone else's experience to my own. But sometimes, I cannot see where my experience and the other person's experience intersect. It is as if we are from different planets, or maybe even different galaxies!

This is where the empathetic listening comes into play. The times when our opponent's point-of-view seems the most foreign and far-fetched are precisely the times when we must seek to understand first.

I'm far from perfect at this skill but I'm working on it. It's especially hard for me to try to see things from the perspective of those who disagree with what I consider matters of human dignity and respect. Ironically, I have trouble affording those who disagree the dignity and respect that they fail to show others. So I was particularly impressed by this letter from a librarian to a patron who didn't want the library to have a children's book with a gay wedding on the shelf. This librarian's letter is a model for the level of understanding that I hope to someday attain.

Anniversary Marriage Equality Post

Over the past several years, I have posted something on the occasion of our wedding anniversary concerning my sadness that others are still deprived of experiencing the wedded state that Jeff and I are allowed by virtue of our unmatched 23rd chromosomal pairs. Let this year be no exception.

The difference is that there seems to be a glimmer of hope this year. California's state supreme court ruled that the state must allow same-sex marriages to take place. There is a measure on the ballot in November that threatens to outlaw same-sex marriages, however, but it does not look like it will receive enough support to pass. But I plan to donate to the pro-marriage-equality side sometime soon, as an anniversary gift to myself.

I will leave you with some interesting readings on the subject:

I Do -- And Why: This is an article explaining why Greta Christina and her longtime partner got married when marriage was opened up to same-sex couples in California. Good for in case you wonder why same-sex couples can't just be happy with civil unions.

An Exercise in Empathy: This one I enjoyed because like me, the author is an atheist who is in a relationship with a believer. (The reason I had time to make two posts this morning? Jeff has taken Vinny to Quaker Meeting with him.)

All You Need Is Love

I just want to sob for joy when I see the pictures of all the happy, now legally-wedded, same-sex couples in California! Here's a particularly nice compilation of photos plus music :)

Congratulations, newlyweds! May your marriages endure and your love for one another continue to grow.

A Landmark Decision

I was ecstatic when I heard the news that California's State Supreme Court has struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriages!

This is a very important issue to me, because half of the members of my first family (excluding myself) are gay. I have always been a proponent of marriage equality, but the fact that it directly impacts my loved ones raises its importance to me.

I am pleased by their decision because it underscores the fact that marriage, in the eyes of the government, is independent of religion. The only objections to same-sex marriage are religious in nature, and therefore irrelevant when making the decision on whose commitments can be granted legal recognition.

I got goosebumps when I read the wonderful news in an email from the ACLU. Here are some particularly poignant excerpts:

Simply having the California Supreme Court say that constitutional principles demand that marriage be open to same-sex couples is an enormous win. This Court has a remarkable history of leadership on civil rights and civil liberties. It made landmark decisions on race and sex discrimination, on freedom of speech and privacy, and on treatment of the disabled and poor people long before the U.S. Supreme Court. No court in America has more authority to say that marriage for same-sex couples is an issue of basic freedom than this one.

...

Marriage in California will transform the discussion of marriage nationwide. California has one of the largest economies in the world. Given the state’s economic clout, the fact that California is marrying same-sex couples will put considerable pressure on the rest of the country to recognize those marriages.

Even more important, the rest of the country recognizes that California is America’s cultural trendsetter, that cultural change in California is usually a preview of what is to come in the rest of the United States. Most Americans already believe that marriage for same-sex couples is bound to happen sooner or later. I think marriage in California will help persuade many of them that this is an issue of basic fairness, and that the time for it is now.

...

Thank you, California, for giving those of us who value equality a little hope for the future! With a lot of elbow grease and a little luck, the committed relationships of same-sex couples such as my own family members could be legally recognized within a decade, which pleases me to no end.

Ten Couples

My sister and her better half recently sent me a link to the stories of ten couples. These couples are typical in many ways: they cook, clean, raise children, pay taxes, enjoy each other's company, and basically look and act like anybody else.

But these committed couples, some of whom have been together for more than fifty years, are not afforded the rights that my husband and I take for granted, simply because they are composed of two people with identical private parts. When you hear their stories, it really humanizes the over-politicized debate on marriage equality. They don't want special rights. They just want the same rights that other couples enjoy by virtue of possessing complementary private parts.

The money quote: "It doesn't matter who you love, what matters is that you can love and that you do love someone. And that's it."

National Coming Out Day!

I didn't realize it until this morning, but today is National Coming Out Day! So, Happy Coming Out Day to all my GLBT friends and loved ones!

In case it wasn't already obvious, I support my friends and loved ones of all sexual orientations, gender identities, ages, races, shapes, sizes, religious persuasions, national origins, handedness, eye colors, etc. But I figured that today would be a good day to come out explicitly as a GLBT ally.

Half of my first family, excluding myself, is gay. My situation is somewhat unique, in that one of my parents is gay, and before she figured that one out, she spent more than 35 years married to my dad and had three wonderful daughters. I'm glad that she eventually figured it out and found the woman of her dreams. Overall, we're all much happier now that we've adjusted to our new-found places, although getting there was rather traumatic.

So I'm really glad that my sister was able, whether through simple self-awareness or because society is much more tolerant now, to find the woman of her dreams without having to go through the unhappiness of being with the wrong person for two-thirds of her life!

There are other GLBT people outside of my family whose existence has impacted me in such a positive way that I can't even imagine life without them! This world would be a lonely place without them. So I thought I'd give a brief tribute to two of them, going in chronological order.

The first was a friend of my older sister's… let's call him Maury, for the sake of argument ;)

Maury was two years ahead of me in school. He went to the same high school as Rachel, which was a different school from the one I went to, but he was also in the youth orchestra with me and Rachel. He came over to our house fairly often when Rachel was a senior. He had outstanding taste in music, I remember, introducing us to Poulenc, and most importantly, me to opera. He had the CDs of Carmen, sung by Maria Callas, and Carmen ended up being something I grew quite fond of. After Rachel graduated and went on to college, for some reason he still liked the rest of the family enough to come and hang out at our house. I went to a play and maybe a couple of concerts with him his senior year of high school. Then he went off to college, although he would still stop by during breaks. But I don't think I've seen him in over ten years, although Rachel still keeps up with him somewhat.

Maury really opened me up to some music I never would have heard of, had it not been for him, and to opera, which was not well-liked in my first family for some reason. But I have to admit, Jeff and I own three CD sets of complete operas: Carmen (with Callas), Don Giovanni (with Samuel Ramey), and L'Elisir d'Amore (with Pavarotti). Maury would probably think this is insufficient, and I would agree with him, except that CD sets of operas are expensive! So, Maury, if you're reading, I would gladly take donations of operas! :)

The second GLBT person I'm going to write about was not a close friend. It was somebody whom I knew in Illinois. This person was a man when we first met, and transitioned into a woman by about a year before I left.

I met "Dan" early in my graduate career. He was a staff member at the university. He was short, and sleight of build, with glasses, kind of a squeaky voice, and a long blond ponytail. As we interacted I had no idea that he felt that there was a mismatch between his body and his mental image of himself.

I didn't see him much for several years, so I had no idea that he was doing hormone replacement or anything. We interacted via computer, on newsgroups, so I never saw any changes. As the time came closer, he started hinting on the newsgroups about a big change that was happening to him, and I soon figured out that he was about to become a she.

Some religiously conservative people on the newsgroups were less than charitable in their reactions. They called Dan a sick person with a mental illness, condemned him to hell, and even threatened him. But Dan prevailed and became "Cherise," getting an official name change, a new driver's license and even a new user ID from the university. (The new user ID was probably the hardest one of those to obtain. They never did it for women who changed their names when they got married, so I don't know how she did it, quite honestly!)

I visited her in the same old office I'd been to before. It was a little strange to call this person I knew Cherise instead of Dan, but really it was not any stranger than calling women I've known my whole life by their new married name, or calling a friend of mine who changed her entire name by that new name. This change of identity didn't threaten my ideas of gender roles or anything, seeing as I don't really conform to gender roles myself. And I noticed that Cherise had better hair than I did, so I asked her for her secret. We remained friends until I left. I tried to see her when I was back in Illinois in August, but she was out of the office when I stopped by.

I admire Cherise for her ability to be herself, no matter what others said. Her parents were pretty displeased at their son becoming a woman, and I'm not sure what kind of relationship they have today. Her courage inspires me to be true to myself, and I'm glad that I know her. If she can face down that kind of opposition, then I can face anything that life gives me!

Anyhow, I'm grateful for what the people I've met of all sexual orientations and gender identities have shared with me. Happy Coming Out Day!

When It's Personal

It's easy to abstractly support an ideal (e.g., people should make enough money from their jobs to be able to have a certain standard of living; we should put a stop to global climate change; people who are in love should be allowed to marry, regardless of sexual orientation). What's hard is putting your support of that ideal into practice (e.g. not buying cheap shit made in China at Wal-Mart, and advocating for improved working conditions; keeping driving and unnecessary consumption to a minimum; advocacy on behalf of marriage equality).

I would be the first to admit that I have a lot of ideals that I believe are important (and I named a few of them in my parenthetical comments), but that I don't tend to do much about them until they're somehow personal to me. I suspect I am not alone in this.

I was not a big advocate for marriage equality until it occurred to me that half the members of my first family (excluding myself) were deprived of the right to marry the person they loved, and it wasn't fair! Oh sure, I supported marriage equality in the abstract, but I lacked the passion that I now feel for advocating this position.

Similarly, I was not a passionate supporter of universal healthcare until I experienced the nightmare that is our country's health insurance system first-hand. I discussed some of this last year in my post on Pareto-optimal healthcare and in several other posts on healthcare.

It was experience that led me to understand the great impact of these issues. And if I want to find some passion about these other principles, they somehow need to become more personal to me.

Things that Make No Sense to Me

I freely admit to being swept up in Obamania. I voted for Barack Obama when he ran for senate in my former home state of Illinois, and I still consider him my senator. (Bob Corker? Not so much.)

But the more I listen to him, the more fed up I get with his clear homophobia. (Look, Barack. Teh Gay is not a disease. You're not going to catch it!) Oh sure, compared to the antediluvian
who technically represents me now, Senator Obama is positively forward-thinking. But here's what I don't get.

In the debate the other night, Senators Edwards and Obama, both of whom are known to oppose gay marriage, were asked how they could justify using their religious beliefs to oppose gay marriage, when people used the same justification for opposing interracial marriage. Here's the clip:




I thought that John Edwards gave a fairly satisfactory answer. Basically, although he is personally opposed to gay marriage, he would not want to use his religious beliefs to prevent people from having equal rights. Of course that's not the answer I would want to hear, but it's better than what you would hear from any of the Republicans.

But Barack Obama's answer made me very angry. He said that the civil unions he proposed would confer all the rights that the states grant to heterosexual couples to homosexual couples. (Okay, sounds suspiciously "separate but equal," but better than nothing.) But his next statement sent my blood pressure skyrocketing. He said that it's up to individual churches to decide whether to recognize these relationships as marriages or not!

Look, people, I'll say it one last time. If heterosexual atheists can have legally recognized marriages, then homosexual couples of any religious persuasion should also be allowed to legally marry. Here's why. If the state recognizes marriages between atheists, then marriage is not a religious institution in the eyes of the state. Therefore, whatever religious objections there may be to the union of two individuals are not relevant to the legality of their marriage.

If your church opposes same-sex marriage, fine. They will never be required to perform same-sex marriages. Just like they will never be required to perform atheist marriages. After all, that would go against the principles of religious freedom upon which this country was built!

But like your church deserves to be separate from the state, the state needs to be separate from the church. That's why I can support marriage equality without fearing that it infringes upon anybody's rights.

Loving and loving

This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision, in which Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws were struck down. It seems obvious nowadays that there is no good reason to prohibit members of different "races" from marrying. After all, as we probe into understanding the human genome, we have come to the inescapable conclusion that race is a purely artificial construct.

Also, June is Gay Pride Month. So it seems like the perfect time to talk about marriage equality!

I always end up in a state of awe when I read the insights of the ever-brilliant Terrance of The Republic of T on just about any topic he sets his mind to. His posts on gay marriage are no exception. Of course, the topic is near and dear to his heart, as he is a gay man. But he still has the remarkable ability to remove himself from the equation and examine both the motives of the gay community in desiring marriage equality and the motives of those who oppose legalizing his relationship with his true love, just because they have the same equipment between their legs. (Those are just two of his many amazing posts.)

It's depressing to think that because of their rigid viewpoints, intolerant people are trying to prevent someone from having their loved one at their side when they're on their deathbed, costing taxpayers money by not allowing gays to adopt children out of the costly foster care system or boosting the economy by a cool billion dollars by allowing same-sex marriages, forcing people to, as Terrance so eloquently puts it, "settle for their second-best life,"etc. These people repudiate their own humanity when they deny the existence of true love, just because the lovers in question share similarities in their reproductive system.

I was talking to my younger sister about her future the other day. She will soon graduate with a doctorate in Religious Studies, and she'll be on the job market. I was asking her where she'd like to end up, and I was saddened to realize that if she does what's best for herself, Anne, and any children they might end up having, it won't be anywhere near me.

In Virginia, where she lives, they voted in a new law, prohibiting same-sex marriage from ever even considering being valid in Virginia, even if the marriage is valid elsewhere. My own state is no better, with 80% of the voter turnout showing its ugly, bigoted side by supporting a measure almost as vile as that enacted in Virginia. If it were only our two states complicit in denying people's rights! Alas, it is not. They are but two of the latest casualties to homophobia.

Yes, I am angry. There is no room in this society for bigoted homophobes to ruin the lives of decent people. Tennessee badly needs an influx of creative, dynamic, energetic people to revitalize its economy, pay for needed improvements to its infrastructure, and improve its educational system. But bigoted measures like anti-marriage-equality amendments only repel people the very people we need!

And I'm not just talking about gay people. Until there's a critical mass of diversity, it will be hard to attract anyone who doesn't fit into the white, "Christian" mold. Only the strongest (or perhaps the craziest) misfits will be brave enough to inhabit this state. I am one of them and I'm not going anywhere. This is my home and I have a right to it. And if I wait long enough, I know that rational thought and decency will prevail.

Some insights I have gained from Terrance have given me hope. In particular, he talked about what made the Loving v. Virginia ruling possible. Quoting from this Washington Post article that Terrance cites in his most recent post on the topic,

"Nowadays everyone agrees that bans on interracial marriages are unconstitutional, and even if they weren't, few people would support them. But Loving illustrates something important about the evolution of constitutional law.... At one point, [anti-miscegenation, segregation laws, and discrimination against women] were seen as legitimate reflections of the world, not as invidious attempts to impose inequality. When the court held these practices unconstitutional, it was neither enforcing a rule that had existed since 1868 nor creating a new rule. It was recognizing that social attitudes had shifted, and with them the understanding about what is reasonable and what is invidious."

So maybe we are currently in the depressing middle installment of the gay-marriage saga trilogy. Maybe at this moment, The Empire Strikes Back, but soon, we will mark The Return of the Jedi. Public opinion is shifting towards agreeing that love can bloom in all places, even between two members of the same sex.

Freedom to Marry and Normalcy

I think that a lot of people object to same-sex marriage because they see it as something "weird" or "disgusting." I know that when I was first alerted to the idea that people of the same sex might be romantically interested in one another, my first reaction was revulsion at the thought of how they would... express their intimacy, shall we say. But I soon realized that there were pairs of heterosexuals to which I would have a similar reaction when thinking about the expression of their intimacy. So what really distinguished same-sex couples from opposite-sex couples was the novelty of the idea.

Then I got to thinking, sexual orientation is merely one facet of otherwise complicated human beings. And there are plenty of ways in which I am weird, too, and I wouldn't appreciate people judging me on just one single aspect of my personality.

Here are just a few ways in which I buck the norms:

• Physically,
  
  
  
  • I am 5'11" (>95th percentile for white women in the United States)*
    
  • I am left-handed (8-15% of the population is left-handed; the Irish term for left-handed, ciotóg, means "strange person")*
    
  • I have no cavities (Average 18-year-old has had 12 cavities; average person age 40+ has had 29)*
    
  • I can curl my tongue in this weird lasagna-noodle shape. (no stats on that, but my sister Laura and I are the only people I know who can do this)
    
  
  
• Academically,
  
  
  
  • I have a Ph.D (like 0.6% of American women)*
    
  • ... in computer science (like 2.4% [1136] of all American doctorates awarded in 2005; 19% of which [225] were awarded to women)*
    
  • and a B.S. in Physics. (couldn't find any stats on that, but there was one other woman in my class and at the time there were no women professors in my department)
    
  
  
• Demographically,
  
  
  
  • I am American (like roughly 4.5% of the world's population)*
    
  • Our family is a reverse-traditional family (like 147,000 other American households)*
    
  • I out-earn 75% of Americans*, and 99% of all people in the world.
    
  
  
• Philosophically,
  
  
  
  • I am an atheist (5-10% of Americans)*
    
  • I support marriage equality (unlike 81% of my fellow Tennesseeans)
    
  
  

Any one of these facts about me make me unusual. All of these facts together make me a very strange person indeed! But my uniqueness does not disqualify me from being a member of the human race, deserving of love, respect, and equality. Some people's "strange" attraction to members of the same sex doesn't disqualify them, either.

Freedom to Marry Week

I learned today that it's Freedom to Marry Week. The purpose of this week is to raise awareness and encourage marriage equality.

Unlike most of my fellow Tennesseeans, I voted against Proposition One (prohibiting same-sex marriage) on our ballot in the fall. I believe that the state should recognize the union of two consenting adults who love one another, regardless of the parity or disparity in their 23rd pair of chromosomes. As I've said before, marriage is not a religious institution; otherwise, the marriages of atheists like me would not be valid. If churches don't want to perform the sacrament of marriage for same-sex couples, that's fine with me. They wouldn't want to perform the sacrament of marriage for me, either, and it wouldn't be fair to require them to do so. But the secular institution of marriage is beyond their purview.

I've always been a proponent of marriage equality, but this issue is near and dear to my heart because there are people near and dear to me who are adversely affected by the marriage double standard. Two of my immediate family members are left without legal recourse in the event of the decline, hospitalization, or wrongful death of their dearest loved one. And while I may not be on such great terms with one of those family members, I still don't think it's right for her to be deprived of the rights that my husband and I enjoy purely by virtue of having different organs.

Anniversary Thoughts

I am pleased to announce that as of today, Jeff and I have been married for eight years. That's 2922 days, or about 70,128 hours, for those who are reading this just for the math! It's been a mixed 4,207,680 minutes, with its ups and downs, but overall I'd say it's been good and keeps getting better. The experience has definitely been worth it, and I would hope that everyone could be as fortunate as I, to find that special someone and have the opportunity to spend the rest of your lives together.

Unfortunately, not everyone has had that opportunity over the ages. In some societies it was (and still is!) normal to marry a complete stranger. Royalty often married to establish alliances rather than for love, with the marriages arranged at a very young age. In some societies, if a woman is raped she must marry her rapist! I don't think that any of these make for a good marriage.

To me, marriage is all about the love. I chose to marry Jeff, and he chose to marry me, because we felt so much love for one another that spending the rest of our lives together was the only choice for us. It didn't matter who his family was or how much money either of us had; my father didn't have to give Jeff any cattle as payment; it didn't matter that our families were unconnected and that this connection brought no new prestige to either side. Neither family gained anything but a new family member to love. Our religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds were irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the love we had for each other, the love that we continue to nurture in our hearts, the love that has grown even bigger over the years!

We had a big wedding, inviting everyone we knew and could tolerate. The wedding was held at the Loudoun House, the home of the Lexington Art League, and my mother, licensed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky to perform marriages, signed the legal papers. (Actually, my sisters were the witnesses on the marriage license. The license makes it look suspiciously like a shotgun wedding but I can assure you that was not the case.)

While there were religious elements to the wedding (for example, Jeff's brother gave a very moving prayer), it was overall a non-religious wedding. It was more like a ritualized statement in front of all these people (and God, for the one of us who believes in God) that we were committing to a life together. Marriage is not exclusively a religious condition; the state recognizes the commitment of the religious and non-religious alike. I was glad that it was possible to have our relationship, our commitment, and our love for one another legally recognized.

What is most unfortunate is that not everyone can marry the love of their life, even in this land of freedom. How would you feel if legal technicalities kept you from becoming family with the person you love?

It used to be that anti-miscegenation laws prohibited marriage between people of two different races. Based on an interpretation of the Bible (the story of Phinehas in particular) asserting that the different races of people were not meant to mix, these laws were upheld until 1967 when the Supreme Court overturned Virginia's "Racial Integrity Act of 1924" in their unanimous decision on the case Loving v. Virginia. The Lovings were an inter-racial couple originally residing in Virginia who had gone to Washington, D.C. to marry, in an attempt to evade Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws. Upon their return to Virginia they were tried and convicted, and sentenced to one year of prison, which would be suspended if they left Virginia and did not return. The couple moved to Washington, D.C. and from there began a lawsuit that eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, however, they lost several appeals, including one in which the law was upheld because it was discriminatory against people of all races, so therefore was not discriminatory. In the end, the Lovings prevailed, with the Supreme Court ruling unanimously on their side. Although all anti-miscegenation laws were thereby invalid, the last one on the books, in Alabama, was repealed by referendum in 2000, with only 60% voter support for the repeal! (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation)

Physical characteristics such as race are irrelevant compared to love, when it comes to choosing whom to spend the rest of your life with. What I love about Jeff is his personality, not the color of his skin. He would make me feel the same way whether his skin was white, black, or orange!

While anti-miscegenation laws have been repealed, there are still laws prohibiting two unmarried people who are in love from marrying one another. Couples who are of the same sex are not allowed to marry, which is truly a travesty. Why should they be denied the same opportunity for bliss that Jeff and I have been afforded?

There are many people who express Biblically-based opposition to same-sex marriage. I am not a biblical scholar so I will not debate the validity of this interpretation, except to note that there are scholars and earnestly religious people who draw completely opposing conclusions from the very same Bible. That being said, their opposition comes from their interpretation of the Bible and while they are free to interpret the Bible in any fashion they choose, their freedom ends where my freedom begins, which is outside their churches and homes.

If you don't want same-sex marriage, then don't marry someone of the same sex. If your church is opposed to same-sex marriage, then don't perform same-sex marriages in your church! But permit those who would like to marry a partner of the same sex do so in a secular ceremony. After all, heterosexual non-believer couples can marry in a secular ceremony! Jeff and I were not married by a minister, although religious rituals such as prayer were performed at our wedding ceremony. Religion does not control secular heterosexual marriage (beyond prohibiting non-believers from marrying in that particular religion), and its control should not extend to secular marriages of any kind.

Well, Rebecca, you may be saying, if we allow homosexuals to marry, the next thing that will happen is that people will be wanting to marry their cats. I think this slippery-slope argument is silly; the line should be drawn where the involved parties are able to give legal consent. That's why we prohibit child marriage and why we should continue to prohibit human-animal marriage.

The real slippery-slope argument that people should be concerned about is plural marriage. Personally, as long as consent is met, I don't have a problem with plural marriage. While it's certainly not for me, there are plenty of other activities which are also not for me, and I don't see that that's a valid reason to prohibit something. I mean, I don't like cream cheese, but I don't think that my dislike of it gives me the authority to outlaw the consumption of cream cheese. Sky-diving is also not for me, but many people get great enjoyment out of it. Why should my personal preferences prohibit someone else from having happiness in their life? Obviously, I'm not talking about something like someone who takes great pleasure in murder. I'm referring to people who want to participate in an activity that brings them pleasure and harms at most themselves.

If homosexuality is indeed a sin, it is a sin that harms only those who are participating in it. It doesn't make any difference in my life whom the letter carrier spends his life with or whom my professor loves. If their behavior ensures them a one-way ticket to an unpleasant afterlife, that's their problem. Assuming I'm not on that route myself, I'll be having such a great time in Heaven that I won't hardly know that they're missing. I see nothing wrong with religious groups excluding people based on behavior that violates their religious tenets, however. But this exclusion should not extend beyond the religious group itself.

If you believe that someone you care about is sinning, tell them, pray for them, but remember that it is your belief and their beliefs may be different! We are all given free will and no matter how much we love another person, we cannot force them to behave as we wish. Otherwise, trust me, cream cheese would be a figment of someone's imagination and sky-diving would be no more than a dream. And all people, independent of race, class, religion, or sexual orientation, would be able to marry the love of their life.